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Library 

OF  THE 

University  of  North  Carolina 

This  book  was  presented  by  the  family 
of  the  late 

KEMP  PLUMMEE  BATTLE,  "49 

President  of  the  University  of  North  Carolina 
from  1876  to  1890 


p97o.7_Q75o-/ 


1  OFFICIAL  REPORT^ 


|  of  the  History  Committee 


|  of  the  Grand  Camp  C,  Vv 

I  Department  of  Virginia^ 
jjtgcccccwc-CCTC-cc-..-eccc-eec. 


\»/ 

to 
§ 

vt> 

i 


By  Judge  GEORGE  L.  CHRISTIAN 

Acting  Chairman 

^^  October   1 1th,   1900  ^^ 


L  THE  RIGHT  OF  SECESSION  ESTABLISHED  BY 
NORTHERN  TESTIMONY 

II.  THE  NORTH  THE  AGGRESSOR  IN  BRINGING 
ON  THE  WAR  ESTABLISHED  BY  THEIR 
OWN  TESTIMONY. 


WW 


COMMITTEE  ON  PUBLISHING  A  SCHOOL  HISTORY 
FOR  USE  IN  OUR  PUBLIC  AND  PRrVATE  SCHOOLS 


Geo. 
R.  T.  Barton 
Rev.  B.  D.  Tucker 
R.  S.  B.  Smith 
John  W.  Fulton 


Christian,  Acting  Chairman 
Carter  R.  Bishop 
John  W.  Daniel 
T.  H.  Edwards 
M.  W.  Hazlewood 


R.  A.  Brock 

James  Mann 
W.  H.  Hurkamp 
Micajah  Woods 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2.013 


http://archive.org/details/officialreportofgrandcamp 


'&'#-^^^ 


OFFICIAL  REPORT  OF  THE 

History  Committee  of  the  Grand  Camp  C.  V., 


DEPARTMENT  OF  VIRGINIA. 


To  the  Grand  Camp  of  Confederate  Veterans  of  Virginia  : 

Some  time  in  Julv  last,  Dr.  Stuart  MeGuire,  seeing  that  his  father,  Dr. 
Hunter  McGuire,  the  able  and  distinguished  Chairman  of  this  Committee, 
was  permanently. disabled  for  longer  discharging  the  duties  devolving  on 
him,  sent  his  resignation  to  your  Commander.  A  meeting  of  this  Com- 
mittee was  promptly  called,  and  it  was  the  unanimous  opinion  o  the  mem- 
bers present  that  the  resignation  should  not  be  accepted,  but  that  some 
member  of  the  Committee  should  be  designated  to  write  the  Report  for  this 
meeting.  I  was  designated  by  the  Commander  lor  the  performance  of  this 
important  task. 

Fully  recognizing  then,  as  I  do  now,  both  my  inability  and  the  lack  of 
time  at  my  command,  for  the  proper  discharge  of  the  duty  thus  assigned 
me,  I  earnestly  asked  to  be  excused  trom  the  undertaking,  and  nothing  but 
my  devotion,  both  to  Dr.  McGuire  and  the  Confederate  cause,  could  have 
induced  me  to  consent  to  undertake  a  work  for  which  I  felt  so  poorly 
prepared. 

Since  that  time,  the  Hand  that  strikes  no  erring  blow  has  taken  from 
us  our  able  and  beloved  Chairman,  and  he  now  sleeps  in  beautiful  Holly- 
wood. I  have  no  words  to  express  the  pers  mal  loss  I  feel  at  this  calamity, 
and  I  know  that  you,  and  each  of  you,  share  with  me  in  these  feelings. 
Distinguished  both  in  war,  and  in  peace,  for  ability  and  fidelity  to  every 
trust,  there  was  nothing  for  which  he  was  more  distinguished,  than  for  his 
love  and  fidelity  to  our  cause,  and  to  those  who  fought  to  sustain  it.  He 
is  lost  to  us  as  counsellor  and  fr;end.  He  is  lost  to  us  as  our  leader  in  labor 
for  the  truth.  I  am  here  not  to  supply  his  place.  No  one  can  know,  as  I 
do,  how  unequal  I  am  to  such  an  undertaking;  but  I  am  about  to  try,  as 
best  I  maj',  to  carry  out  the  plans  he  had  formed,  to  obey  his  instructions, 
all  unconsciously  given.  I  persuade  myself  that  in  this  attempt  I  shall 
have  your  kind  indulgence. 

SOUTH  NOT  THE  AGGRESSORS. 

The  evening  before  Dr.  McGuire  was  stricken  with  the  malady  which 
forever  incapacitated  him  for  any  earthly  service,  I  was  with  him,  and,  as 
was  frequently  the  case,  we  were  talking  of  the  Confederate  war.  In  the 
course  of"  the  conversation,  he  alluded  to  the  Report  of  last  year,  and  feel- 
ingly expressed  his  just  pride  in  the  way  you  received  it.  He  then  said  :  "  I 
am  already  making  preparations  for  my  next  Report.  I  intend  in  that  to 
vindicate  the  South  lrom  the  oft-repeated  charge  that  we  were  the  aggress- 
ors in  bringing  on  the  war";  and  he  then  added:  "This  will  be  my  last 
'labor  of  love'  for  the  dear  Southern  people."  Within  less  than  twenty 
hours  from  the  time  that  sentence  was  spoken,  the  splendid  intellect  that 
conceived  it  was  a  mournful  wreck,  and  the  tongue  which  gave  it  utterance 
was  paral3'zed. 

My  task,  therefore,  is  to  show  that  your  Chairman  was  right  in  saying 
that  the  South  was  not  the  aggressor  in  bringing  on  the  war;  that,  on  the 
contrary,  we  did  all  that  honorable  men  could  do  in  the  vain  attempt  to 


avert  it — all  that  could  be  done  without  debasing  the  men  and  women  of 
the  South  with  conscious  disgrace,  and  leaving  to  our  children  a  heritage 
of  shame;  and  I  shall  further  prove  that  the  Northern  people,  with  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  at  their  head  brought  on  the  war  by  provocation  to  war  and 
by  act  of  war;  and  that  they  were  and  are,  therefore,  directly  responsible 
for  all  the  multiplied  woes  which  resulted  therefrom.  In  doing  this,  I  shall 
quote  almost  exclusively  from  Northern  sources;  and,  whilst  I  cannot  hope 
to  bring  to  your  attention  at  this  late  day  anything  that  is  new.  1  do  hope 
that,  by  reiterating  and  repeating  some  of  the  old  facts,  I  shall  be  able  to 
revive  impressions  which  ma}'  have  faded  from  the  minds  of  some;  I  shall 
hope,  too,  to  reach  the  many,  many  others,  especially  the  young,  who  have 
been  the  victims  of  false  teaching  with  respect  to  these  facts,  or  have  had 
no  opportunity,  or,  perhaps,  little  disposition,  to  become  familiar  with 
them. 

REASONS  FOR   SUCH   PAPERS. 

It  is  well  to  set  forth  the  reasons  that  actuate  us  in  preparing  such 
papers  as  these.  These  reasons  were  presented  with  great  force  in  the 
Report  of  1899.  Now,  as  then,  they  are  found  in  the  fact  that  denials  or 
perversions  of  the  truth  are  sown  broadcast  all  over  the  literature  of  the 
North.  Not  only  does  this  characterize  their  permanent  histories,  as  then 
shown  with  such  clearness  of  criticism  and  cogency  of  reply,  but  their 
story-writings,  their  periodicals  and  transient  newspaper  publications — all, 
are  vehicles,  to  a  degree  at  least,  of  misrepresentation  on  these  points. 
Their  worthiest  orators  and  writers  have  darerl  to  tell  the  truth  on  im- 
portant points,  but  the  literature  we  have  described  is  that  which  reaches 
the  haphazard  reader  and  permeates  the  South  as  well  as  the  North.  The 
Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  contains  many  brave  men.  We  have  met  them 
with  arms  in  their  hands.  It  contains  others  whose  weapons  of  warfare 
are  opprobrious  epithets  and  denunciatory  resolutions  This  is  a  matter 
of  annual  display.  Annually  the  Northern  public  is  again  misled,  and  its 
day  of  repentance  is  postponed  The  men  of  the  South  are,  therefore,  con- 
strained to  make  record  of  the  truth.  I,  therefore,  proceed  to  restate  my 
purpose,  which  is  to  show  that  the  South  did  not,  and  that  the  North  did, 
inaugurate  the  war.  Before  proceeding  to  the  direct  discussion  of  this 
question,  and  because  the  right  of  a  State  to  secede  from  the  Union  was  the 
real  issue  involved  in  the  conflict,  and  the  proximate  cause  thereof,  I  think 
it  pertinent  to  inquire  particularly.  In  what  special  locality,  if  in  any,  this 
doctrine  originated;  by  whom,  if  by  either  party  rather  than  the  other,  it 
was  most  emphatically  taught;  and  especially  when,  if  in  either  section, 
the  threat  of  the  application  for  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  was  first, 
most  frequently  and  most  ominously  heard  ?  In  pursuance  of  this  inquiry, 
and  adhering  to  our  plan  of  calling  the  North  to  witne-s,  let  us  ask  first. 
What  was  the  opinion  of  Northern  and  other  unprejudiced  writers  on  this 
question  both  prior  to  and  since  the  war?  Of  course,  we  know  that  the 
right  of  a  State  to  secede  was  commonly  held  by  the  statesmen  of  the 
South,  and  we  venture  the  assertion  that  no  unprejudiced  mind  can  to-day 
read  the  history  of  the  adoptiorl  of  the  Constitution  and  the  formation  of 
this  government  under  it  without  being  convinced  that  the  right  of  seces- 
sion as  exercised  by  the  South  did  exist. 

THE  RIGHT  OF   SECESSION. 

A  distinguished  English  writer  says; 

"  I  believe  the  right  of  secession  is  so  clear,  that  if  the  South  had  wished 
to  do  so,  for  no  better  reason  than  that  it  could  not  bear  to  be  beaten  in 
an  election,  like  a  sulky  school-boy  out  of  temper  at  not  winning  a  game, 
and  had  submitted  the  question  of  its  right  to  withdraw  from  the  Union 
to  the  decision  of  any  court  of  law  in  Europe,  she  would  have  carried  her 
point." 

Indeed,  the  decision  of  this  question  might,  with  propriety,  and  doubt- 
less would,  have  rested  for  all  time  on  the  principles  enunciated  in  the  Vir- 

[    2    ] 


ginia  and  Kentucky  resolutions  of  1798  and  '99,  and  the  report  of  Mr. 
Madison  on  these  resolutions.  The  Virginia  resolutions  and  report  were 
drawn  by  Mr.  Madison,  the  "father  ot  the  Constitution";  and  those  of 
Kentucky  by  Mr  Jefferson,  the  author  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence. 
These  principles,  emanating  from  these  "master-builders,"  would,  as 
we  have  said,  have  settled  the  rights  of  the  States  on  this  question  forever, 
but  for  the  fact,  as  Mr.  Henry  Cabot  Lodge  of  Massachusetts  tells  us,  that 
the  North  was  controlled  b}'  expediency,  and  not  by  principle,  in  the  con- 
sideration of  them.  These  resolutions,  when  adopted  by  Virginia  and 
Kentucky,  were  sent  to  the  Northern  Legislatures  for  their  concurrence ; 
and  the  distinguished  Senator  from  Massachusetts,  from  whom  we  are 
quoting,  says  in  terms,  in  his  Life  of  Webster,  that  when  the  resolutions 
were  thus  submitted,  "they  were  not  opposed  on  constitutional  grounds, 
but  only  on  those  of  expediency  and  hostility  to  the  revolution  they  were 
considered  to  embody."  That  they  did  not,  and  could  not,  cite  any  con- 
stitutional principle  as  ground  for  their  rejection,  only  they  held  that  the 
revolution  involved  in  their  application  was  at  that  time  inexpedient.  In 
other  words,  it  did  not  pay  the  New  England  States  to  endorse  the  prin- 
ciples of  those  resolutions  then ;  but  when  they  thought  they  were  being 
oppressed  by  the  Federal  Government  a  lew  years  later  (as  we  shall  pre- 
sently see),  they  were  not  only  ready  to  endorse  these  resolutions,  but 
actually  threatened  to  secede  trom  the  Union. 

TWO  PERTINENT  QUESTIONS. 

But  I  wish  to  advance  a  step  further  in  the  argument,  and  to  inquire — 

(1)  Where  the  doctrine  oi  secession  originated  ?  and 

(2)  What  distinguished  Northern  statesmen  have  said  of  the  right, 
both  before  and  since  the  war? 

Here  we  may  properly  add  the  clear  statement  of  an  able  Northern 
writer,  who  declares  his  opinion  (presently  to  be  quoted  in  full )  that  at  the 
time  the  Constitution  was  accepted  by  the  States,  there  was  not  a  man  in 
the  country  who  doubted  theright  of  each  and  every  State  peaceably  to  with- 
draw from  the  Union.  In  fact,  we  may  at  once  answer  our  first  inquiry  by 
saying  that  the  doctrine  of  secession  originated  in  neither  section,  but  was 
recognized  at  the  first  as  underlying  the  Constitution  and  accepted  by  all 
parties.  In  confirmation  of  this  view,  but  particularly  with  respect  to  the 
region  of  its  earliest,  most  frequent,  most  emphatic  and  most  threatening 
assertion,  we  proceed  to  show  further,  that  a  recent  Northern  writer  has 
used  this  language: 

"  A  popular  notion  is  that  the  State-rights — secession  or  disunion  doc- 
trine— was  originated  by  Calhoun,  and  was  a  South  Carolina  heresy.  But 
that  popular  notion  is  wrong.  According  to  the  best  information  I  have 
been  able  to  acquire  on  the  subject,  the  State-rights,  or  secession  doctrine, 
was  originated  by  Josiah  Ouincy,  and  was  a  Massachusetts  heresy." 

This  writer  says  Ouincy  first  enunciated  the  doctrine  in  opposing  the 
bill  for  the  admission  of  what  was  then  called  the  "Orleans  Territory" 
(now  Louisiana)  in  1811,  when  he  declared,  that  "if  the  bill  passed  and 
that  territory  was  admitted,  the  act  would  be  subversive  of  the  Union, 
and  the  several  States  would  be  freed  from  their  federal  bonds  and  obliga- 
tions ;  and  that,  as  it  will  be  the  right  of  all  ( the  States),  so  it  will  be  the 
duty  of  some,  to  prepare  definitely  for  a  separation,  amicably  if  they  can, 
violently  if  they  must.'1 

Whilst  this  author  may  be  right  in  characterizing  the  development  of 
the  doctrine,  and  fixing  this  right  as  a  "  Massachusetts  heresy,"  he  is 
wrong  in  fixing  upon  its  first  progenitor,  and  in  saying  that  the  date  of 
its  birth  was  as  late  as  1811 ;  for  in  1803,  one  Colonel  Timothy  Pickering, 
a  senator  from  Massachusetts,  and  Secretary  of  State  in  the  Cabinet  of 
John  Adams,  complaining  of  what  he  called  "  the  oppressions  of  the  aristo- 
cratic Democrats  of  the  South,"  said,  "I  will  not  despair;  I  will  rather 
anticipate  a  new  confederacy."    .     .     .    "That  this  can  be  accomplished 

**  L    3   ]  . 

o 

n 


without  spilling  one  drop  of  blood  I  have  little  doubt."  .  .  .  "7t 
must  begin  with  Massachusetts.  The  proposition  would  be  welcomed  by 
Connecticut;  and  could  we  doubt  of  New  Hampshire?  But  New  York 
must  be  associated  ;  and  how  is  her  concurrence  to  be  obtained  ?  She  must 
be  made  the  center  of  the  confederacy  Vermont  and  New  Jersey  would 
follow,  of  course;  and  Rhode  Island  of  necessity." 

THE   HARTFORD   CONVENTION. 

In  1814,  the  Hartford  Convention  was  called  and  met  in  consequence 
of  the  opposition  of  New  England  to  the  war  then  pending  with  Great 
Britain.  Delegates  were  sent  to  this  Convention  by  the  Legislatures  of 
Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut,  and  several  counties  and 
towns  from  other  Northern  States  also  sent  representatives.  This  Conven- 
tion, after  deliberating  with  closed  doors  on  the  propriety  of  withdrawing 
the  States  represented  in  it  from  the  Union,  published  an  address,  in  which 
it  said,  among  other  things : 

"If  the  Union  be  destined  to  dissolution  .  .  .  it  should,  if  possible, 
be  the  work  of  peaceable  times  and  deliberate  consent.  .  .  .  Whenever  it 
shall  appear  that  the  causes  are  radical  and  permanent,  a  separation  by 
equitable  arrangement  will  be  preferable  to  an  alliance  by  constraint 
among  nominal  friends,  but  real  enemies." 

In  1839,  Ex-President  John  Ouincy  Adams,  in  an  address  delivered  by 
him  in  New  York,  said : 

"  The  indissoluble  link  of  union  between  the  people  of  the  several  States 
of  this  confederated  nation  is,  after  all,  not  in  the  right,  but  in  the  heart. 
If  the  day  should  ever  come  (  may  Heaven  avert  it )  when  the  affections  of 
the  people  of  these  States  shall  be  alienated  from  each  other,  the  bonds  of 
political  association  will  not  long  hold  together  parties  no  longer  attracted 
by  the  magnetism  of  consolidated  interests  and  kindly  sympathies;  and  far 
better  will  it  be  for  the  people  of  the  disunited  States  to  part  in  friendship 
with  each  other  than  to  be  held  together  by  constraint.''' 

This  same  man  presented  to  Congress  the  first  petition  ever  presented 
in  that  body  for  a  dissolution  of  the  Union. 

Mr.  William  Rawle,  a  distinguished  lawyer  and  jurist  of  Pennsylvania, 
in  his  work  on  the  Constitution,  says  this: 

"It  depends  on  the  State  itself  to  retain  or  abolish  the  principle  of 
representation,  because  it  depends  on  itself  whether  it  will  continue  a 
member  ot  the  Union.  To  deny  this  right  would  be  inconsistent  with  the 
principles  on  which  all  our  political  systems  are  founded,  which  is  that  the 
people  have  in  all  cases  a  right  to  determine  how  they  will  be  governed." 

In  the  case  of  the  Bank  of  Augusta  against  Earle,  13  Peters,  590-592, 
it  was  decided  by  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  the  same  j'ear  in 
which  Mr.  John  Ouincy  Adams  made  his  speech  above  quoted  from  that — 

"  They  are  sovereign  States.  .  .  .  We  think  it  well  settled  that  by  the 
law  of  comity  among  nations  a  corporation  created  by  one  sovereign  is 
permitted  to  make  contracts  in  another,  and  to  sue  in  its  courts,  and  that 
the  same  law  of  comity  prevails  among  the  several  sovereignties  of  this 
Union." 

Shortly  after  the  nomination  of  General  Taylor,  a  petition  was  actually 
presented  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  "asking  Congress  to  devise 
means  for  the  dissolution  of  the  Union."  And  the  votes  of  Messrs.  Seward, 
Chase  and  Hale  were  recorded  in  favor  of  its  reception. 

In  1844-,  the  Legislature  of  Massachusetts  attempted  to  coerce  the 
President  and  Congress  by  the  use  of  this  language: 

"  The  project  of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  unless  arrested  on  the  thresh- 
old, may  tend  to  drive  these  States  (New  England)  into  a  dissolution  of 
the  Union." 

C   4    ] 


THE  VIEWS  OF   WEBSTER. 

Daniel  Webster  (the  great  "expounder  of  the  Constitution,"  as  he  is 
called),  notwithstanding  his  famous  reply  to  Mr.  Hayne,  delivered  in  1830, 
in  which  he  so  ingeniously  denied  the  right  of  a  State  to  determine  for  itself 
when  its  constitutional  powers  were  infringed,  and  also  that  the  Constitu- 
tion was  a  compact  between  sovereign  States,  and  contended  that  the 
power  to  determine  the  constitutionality  of  the  laws  of  Congress  was 
lodged  only  in  the  Federal  Government,  in  a  speech  delivered  at  Capon 
Springs,  Virginia,  in  1851,  used  this  language: 

"  If  the  South  were  to  violate  any  part  of  the  Constitution  intention- 
airy  and  sj'Stematically,  and  persist  in  so  doing  from  year  to  year,  and  no 
remedy  could  be  had,  would  the  North  be  any  longer  bound  by  the  rest  of 
it;  and  if  the  North  were  deliberately,  babituallv-  and  of  fixed  purpose  to 
disregard  one  part  of  it,  would  the  South  be  bound  any  longer  to  observe 
its  other  obligations  ?  .  .  .  How  absurd  is  it  to  suppose  that  when  different 
parties  enter  into  a  compact  for  certain  purposes,  either  can  disregard  any 
one  provision  and  expect  nevertheless  the  other  to  observe  the  rest!  .  .  . 
A  bargain  cannot  be  broken  on  one  side  and  still  bind  the  other." 

He  said,  in  a  speech  delivered  at  Buffalo,  N.  Y.,  during  the  same  year: 

"The  question,  fellow-citizens,  (and  I  put  it  to  you  as  the  real  ques- 
tion)— the  question  is,  Whether  you  and  the  rest  of  the  people  of  the  great 
State  of  New  York  and  of  all  the  States,  will  so  adhere  to  the  Union — will 
so  enact  and  maintain  laws  to  preserve  that  instrument — that  you  will  not 
only  remain  in  the  Union  yourselves,  but  permit  3rour  Southern  brethren  to 
remain  in  it  and  help  to  perpetuate  it." 

How  different  is  the  language  above  quoted  from  Mr.  Webster  in  his 
Capon  Springs  speech  from  the  proposition  as  stated  by  Mr.  Lincoln  in  his 
first  inaugural,  when  he  says: 

"One  party  to  a  contract  may  violate  it — break  it,  so  to  speak — but 
does  it  not  require  all  to  lawfully  rescind  it  ?" 

But,  what  more  could  be  expected  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  when  it  is  well 
known  that  he  held  that  the  relation  of  the  States  to  the  Union  was  the 
same  as  that  which  the  counties  bear  to  the  States  of  which  they  respec- 
tively form  a  part  ? 

HIS  REPLY  TO   HAYNE. 

Those  who  deny  the  right  of  seccession  are  fond  of  quoting:  as  their 
authority  extracts  from  Mr.  Webster's  reply  to  Mr.  Hayne,  made  in  1830. 
It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  Capon  Springs  and  Buffalo  speeches  were 
made  in  1851 ;  and  these  last  are  the  product  of  his  riper  thinking — his 
profounder  reflections.  He  had  evidently  learned  much  about  the  Consti- 
tution in  the  twenty-one  years  that  had  intervened,  and  in  his  maturer 
vears,  was  indeed  speaking  as  a  statesman,  and  not  only  as  an  advocate, 
as  he  did  in  1830. 

But  it  is  all-important  to  remember  that  Mr.  Webster  nowhere  in  this 
whole  speech  refers  to  the  right  of  secession.  His  whole  argument  in  this 
connection,  is  against  the  right  of  nullification  another  and  very  different 
thing;  but  one  which,  as  we  will  presently  show,  was  actually  being- exer- 
cised by  fourteen  out  of  the  sixteen  Free  States  in  1  861. 

In  1^55,  Senator  Benjamin  F.  Wade  of  Ohio  (afterwards,  as  we  know, 
one  of  the  most  notorious  South-haters),  said  in  a  speech  delivered  in  the 
United  States  Senate: 

"  Who  is  the  judge  in  the  last  resort  of  the  violation  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States  by  the  enactment  of  a  law  ?  Who  is  the  final  arbiter, 
the  General  Government  or  the  States  in  their  sovereignty  ?  Why,  sir,  to 
yield  that  point  is  to  yield  up  all  the  rights  of  the  States  to  protect  their 
own  citizens,  and  to  consolidate  this  government  into  a  miserable  des- 
potism." 

[    5   ] 


And  he  further  said,  on  the  18th  of  December,  1860: 

"  I  do  not  so  much  blame  the  people  of  the  South,  because  I  think  they 
have  been  led  to  belief  that  we  to-day,  the  dominant  party,  who  are  about 
to  take  the  reins  of  government,  are  their  mortal  foes,  and  stand  ready  to 
trample  their  institutions  under  foot." 

And  notwithstanding  the  expression  of  these  sentiments,  we  know,  as 
we  say,  that  this  man  became  one  of  the  most  ardent  supporters  of  the 
"miserable  despotism"  established  by  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  became  the 
second  officer  in  that  "  despotism  "  on  the  assasination  of  Mr.  Lincoln. 

DOCTRINE  HELD  BY  GREELEY. 

On  the  9th  of  November,  in  1860,  Mr.  Horace  Greeley,  the  great  apostle 
of  the  Republican  part}%  and  who  was  often  referred  to  during  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's administration  as  the  "  power  behind  the  throne — greater  than  the 
throne  itself  " — said  in  his  paper,  the  New  York  Tribune : 

"If  the  Cotton  States  consider  the  value  of  the  Union  debatable,  we 
maintain  their  perfect  right  to  discuss  it;  nay,  we  hold  with  Jefferson,  to 
the  inalienable  right  of  communities  to  alter  or  abolish  forms  of  govern- 
ment that  have  become  oppressive  or  injurious;  and  if  the  Cotton  States 
decide  that  they  can  do  better  out  of  the  Union  than  in  it,  we  insist  on 
letting  them  go  in  peace.  The  right  to  secede  may  be  a  revolutionary  one, 
but  it  exists  nevertheless ;  and  we  do  not  see  how  one  party  can  have  a 
right  to  do  what  another  party  has  a  right  to  prevent." 

On  the  17th  of  December,  1860,  just  three  days  before  the  secession  of 
South  Carolina,  he  again  said  in  the  Tribune: 

"If  it  (the  Declaration  of  Independence)  justified  the  secession  from  the 
British  Empire  of  three  millions  of  colonists  in  1776,  we  do  not  see  why  it 
would  not  justify  the  secession  of  five  millions  of  Southrons  from  the 
Federal  Union  in  1861.  If  we  are  mistaken  on  this  point,  why  does  not 
some  one  attempt  to  show  wherein  and  why  ?  " 

Again,  on  February  the  23rd,  1861,  five  days  after  the  inauguration  of 
President  Davis  at  Montgomery,  he  said: 

"We  have  repeatedly  said,  and  we  once  more  insist,  that  the  great 
principle  embodied  by  Jefferson  in  the  Declaration  of  American  Indepen- 
dence— that  governments  derive  their  just  powers  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed — is  sound  and  just,  and  that  if  the  Slave  States,  the  Cotton 
States,  or  the  Gulf  States  only,  choose  to  form  an  independent  nation,  they 
have  a  clear  moral  right  to  do  so." 

And  we  know  that  this  man  was  one  of  the  foremost  of  our  oppressors 
during  the  war,  although  his  kindness  to  Mr.  Davis  and  others  after  the 
war,  we  think,  showed  that  he  knew  he  had  done  wrong.  And  }'et,  he  had 
the  audacity  (and  may  we  not  justly  add  mendacity  too?)  to  say,  after 
the  war,  that  he  never  at  any  moment  of  his  life  had  'imagined  that  a 
single  State,  or  a  dozen  States,  could  rightfully  dissolve  the  Union."  Com- 
ment is  surely  unnecessary. 

On  November  the  9th,  1860,  the  New  York  Herald  said: 

"  Each  State  is  organized  as  a  complete  government,  holding  the  purse 
and  wielding  the  sword ;  possessing  the  right  to  break  the  tie  of  the  con- 
federation as  a  nation  might  break  a  treaty,  and  to  repel  coercion  as  a  na- 
tion might  repel  invasion.  .  .  .  Coercion,  if  it  were  possible,  is  out  of 
the  question." 

Both  President  Buchanan  and  his  Attorney-General,  the  afterwards 
famous  Edwin  M.  Stanton,  decided  at  the  same  time  that  there  was  no 
power  under  the  Constitution  to  coerce  a  seceding  State. 

C   6    ] 


SENTIMENT  IN   THE  NORTH. 

But  this  "Massachusetts  heresy,"  as  the  writer  before  quoted  from 
calls  the  right  of  secession,  was  not  only  entertained,  as  we  have  shown, 
at  the  North  before  the  war,  but  has  been  expressed  in  the  same  section  in 
no  uncertain  terms  long  since  the  war.  In  an  article  by  Benjamin  J.  Wil- 
liams, Esq.,  a  distinguished  writer  of  Massachusetts,  entitled  'Died  for 
Their  State,"  and  published  in  the  Lowell  Sun  on  June  5th,  1886,  he  says, 
among  other  things: 

"  When  the  original  thirteen  Colonies  threw  off  their  allegiance  to  Great 
Britain,  they  became  independent  States,  independent  ot  her  and  of  each 
other."  .  .  .  "The  recognition  was  of  the  States  separately,  each  by 
name,  in  the  treaty  of  peace  which  terminated  the  war  of  the  Revolution. 
And  that  this  separate  recognition  was  deliberate  and  intentional,  with 
the  distinct  object  of  recognizing  the  States  as  separate  sovereignties,  and 
not  as  one  nation,  will  sufficientW  appear  bjr  reference  to  the  sixth  volume 
of  Bancroft's  Histor3-  of  the  United  States.  The  Articles  of  Confederation 
between  the  States  declared,  that  'each  State  retains  its  sovereignty,  free- 
dom and  independence.'  And  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  which 
immediately  followed,  was  first  adopted  by  the  States  in  convention,  each 
State  acting  for  itself,  in  its  sovereign  and  independent  capacity,  through  a 
convention  of  its  people.  And  it  was  by  this  ratification  that  the  Consti- 
tution was  established,  to  use  its  own  words,  '  between  the  States  so  rati- 
fying the  same.'  It  is,  then,  a  compact  between  the  States  as  sovereigns, 
and  the  Union  created  by  it  is  a  federal  partnership  of  States,  the  Federal 
Government  being  their  common  agent  for  the  transaction  of  the  Federal 
business  within  the  limits  of  the  delegated  powers." 

LAW   OF  CO-PARTNERSHIPS. 

This  able  writer  then  illustrates  the  compact  between  the  States  by  the 
principles  of  law  governing  ordinar\r  co  partnerships,  just  as  Mr  Webster 
did.     And  he  then  says: 

"Now,  if  a  partnership  between  persons  is  purely  voluntary,  and  sub- 
ject to  the  will  of  its  members  severally,  how  much  more  so  is  one  between 
sovereign  States  ?  and  it  follows  that,  just  as  each,  separately,  in  the  exer- 
cise of  its  sovereign  will,  entered  the  Union,  so  may  it  separately,  in  the  ex- 
ercise ot  that  will,  withdraw  therefrom.  And  further,  the  Lonstitution 
being  a  compact,  to  which  the  States  are  parties  'having  no  common 
judge.'  'each  party  has  an  equal  right  to  judge  for  itself,  as  well  of  infrac- 
tions as  of  the  mode  and  measure  of  redress,'  as  declared  by  Mr.  Jefferson 
and  Mr.  Madison  in  the  celebrated  resolutions  of  '98,  and  the  right  of  se- 
cession irresistibly  follows. 

"  But  aside  from  the  doctrine  either  of  partnership  or  compact,  upon 
the  ground  of  State  sovereignty  pure  and  simple,  does  the  right  of  State 
secession  impregnahlv  rest." 

We  have  quoted  thus  fully  from  this  writer  not  only  because  he  is  a 
Northern  man.  but  because  he  has  stated  both  the  facts  and  the  principles 
underlying  the  formation  of  the  Union,  and  the  rights  of  the  States  therein, 
with  an  accuracy,  clearness  and  force,  that  cannot  be  surpassed. 

But  again:  In  his  life  of  Webster,  published  in  1889.  Mr.  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge,  from  whom  we  have  before  quoted,  and  at  this  time  one  of  the 
distinguished  senators  from  Massachusetts,  uses  this  language  in  speaking 
of  Mr.  Webster's  repty  to  Mr.  Hayne.     He  says 

"The  weak  places  in  his  (Webster's)  armor  were  historical  in  their 
nature  It  was  probably  necessary  (at  all  events  Mr.  Webster  felt  it  to  be 
so)  to  argue  that  the  Constitution  at  the  outset  was  not  a  compact  be- 
tween the  States,  but  a  national  instrument,  and  to  distinguish  the  cases 
of  Virginia  and  Kentucky  in  1799,  and  of  New  England  in  1814,  from  that 

[    7   ] 


of  South  Carolina  in  1830.  The  former  point  he  touched  upon  lightly;  the 
latter  he  discussed  ably,  eloquently  and  at  length.  Unfortunately  the  facts 
were  against  him  in  both  instances." 

And  in  this  connection,  Mr.  Lodge  then  uses  this  language: 

"When  the  Constitution  was  adopted  by  the  votes  of  the  States  at 
Phdadelphia,  and  accepted  by  the  votes  of  the  States  in  popular  conven- 
tion, it  is  safe  to  say  that  there  was  not  a  man  in  the  country,  irom  Wash- 
ington and  Hamilton  on  the  one  side  to  George  Clinton  and  George  Mason 
on  the  other,  who  regarded  the  new  system  as  anything  but  an  experiment 
entered  into  by  the  States,  and  from  which  each  and  every  State  had  the 
right  peaceably  to  withdraw — a  right  which  was  very  likely  to  be 
exercised. ' ' 

Mr.  James  C.  Carter,  now  of  New  York,  but  a  native  of  New  England' 
and  perhaps  the  most  distinguished  lawyer  in  this  country  to-day,  in  a 
speech  delivered  by  him  at  the  University  of  Virginia,  in  1898,  said: 

"I  may  hazard  the  opinion  that  if  the  question  had  been  made,  not  in 
1860,  but  in  3  788,  immediately  after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
whether  the  Union  as  formed  by  that  instrument  could  lawfully  treat  the 
secession  of  a  State  as  rebellion,  and  suppress  it  by  force,  few  of  those  who 
participated  in  forming  that  instrument  would  have  answered  in  the 
affirmative." 

NORTH'S   ATTITUDE    SINCE  THE  WAR. 

And  we  should  never  forget  this  pregnant  and,  we  think,  conclusive 
fact  in  regard  to  this  question,  namely:  the  conduct  of  the  North  after  the 
war  in  regard  to  Mr.  Davis,  General  Lee,  and  others  of  our  leaders.  As  is 
well  known,  Mr.  Davis  was  indicted  three  times  in  their  own  courts  upon 
charges  which  directly  and  necessarily  involved  a  decision  of  the  right  of  a 
State  to  secede  from  the  Union.  Immediately  on  the  finding  of  these  indict- 
ments, he  I  through  his  eminent  Northern  as  well  as  Southern  counsel) 
appeared  at  the  bar  of  the  court  and  demanded  a  speedy  trial,  in  order 
that  he  might  judicially  vindicate  his  course  and  that  of  his  people  before 
the  world.  This  right  of  trial  was  postponed  by  the  Federal  Government 
for  nearly  three  years.  During  two  of  these  years,  he  was  confined  in  a 
casemate  at  Fortress  Monroe  and  subjected  to  indignities  and  tortures,  by 
which  it  was  attempted  to  break  the  spirit  of  the  distinguished  captive ; 
and  at  the  same  time  to  degrade  the  people  whom  he  represented,  and  for 
whom  he  was  a  vicarious  sufferer.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  that  this 
conduct  is  to-day  universally  regarded  as  not  only  unworthy  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  government  which  held  Mr.  Davis  as  its  prisoner,  but 
that  it  has  made  a  page  in  its  history  of  which  it  ought  to  be,  and  we  be- 
lieve is,  ashamed. 

When  at  last  the  Government  consented  to  try  the  case,  it  declined  to 
meet  the  real  question  involved,  in  its  own  chosen  tribunal;  and  having 
been  advised  by  the  best  lawyers  and  statesmen  at  the  North,  that  the 
decision  must  be  against  the  North  and  in  favor  of  the  South,  in  order  to 
evade  the  issue,  the  Chief  Justice  himself  suggested  a  technical  bar  to  the 
prosecution,  which  was  adopted  and  the  cases  dismissed.  The  South  was 
entirely  in  the  power  of  the  North,  and  could  do  nothing  but  accept  this, 
their  own  virtual  confession  that  they  were  wrong  and  that  we  were  right. 

CRUEL,  WICKED,  RELENTLESS  WAR. 

And  so  we  say,  our  comrades,  that  just  because  the  States  of  the  South 
did,  in  the  most  regular  and  deliberate  way,  exercise  their  constitutional 
and  legal  right  to  withdraw  from  a  compact  which  they  had  never  violated, 
but  which  the  Northern  States  had  confessedly  violated  time  and  again,  a 
right  which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  not  only  recognized  by  the  leading 
statesmen  of  the  North,  but  which  it  had  threatened  on  several  occasions  to 

[   8    ] 


put  into  execution — we  say,  just  because  the  Southern  States  did  take  this 
perfectly  legal  step  in  a  perfectly  legal  way,  these  same  people  of  the  North, 
with  Abraham  Lincoln  as  their  head,  proceeded,  as  weshall  presently  show, 
-without  warrant  of  law  or  justice,  to  inaugurate  and  wage  against  the 
South  one  of  the  most  cruel,  wicked  and  relentless  wars  of  which  history 
furnishes  any  record  or  parallel.  Is  there  any  wonder,  then,  that  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Grand  Army  of  the  Republic  would  have  us  be  silent 
about  the  facts  which  we  have  referred  to,  and  not  teach  the  truths  of  this 
history  to  our  children,  when  we  thus  condemn  them  out  of  their  own 
mouths? 

But  we  come  now  to  consider,  who  were  the  agressors  who  inaugu- 
rated this  wicked  war  ? 

We  think  it  important  to  make  this  inquiry,  for  the  reasons  already 
given  and  because  we  apprehend,  there  is  a  common  impression,  that  inas- 
much as  the  South  fired  the  first  gun  at  Fort  Sumter,  it  really  thereby 
brought  on  the  war,  and  was  hence  responsible  for  the  direful  conse- 
quences which  followed  the  firing  of  that  first  shot.  Nothing  could  be  fur- 
ther from  the  truth  Mr.  Hallam,  in  his  Constitutional  History  ot  Eng- 
land, states  a  universally  recognized  principle,  when  he  says: 

"  The  aggressor  in  a  war  (that  is,  he  who  begins  it)  is  not  the  first  who 
uses  force,  but  the  first  who  renders  force  necessary." 

Now  which  side,  according  to  this  high  authority,  was  the  aggressor 
in  this  conflict?     Which  side  was  it  that  rendered  the  first  blow  necessary  ? 

WHAT   MR.   STEPHENS  SAYS. 

Says  Mr.  Stephens,  in  his  "War  Between  the  States":  "I  maintain 
that  it  (the  war)  was  inaugurated  and  begun,  though  no  blow  had  been 
struck,  when  the  hostile  fleet,  styled  the  "  Relief  Squadron,"  with  eleven 
ships  carrying  two  hundred  and  eighty-five  guns  and  two  thousand  four 
hundred  men,  was  sent  out  from  New  York  and  Norfolk,  with  orders  from 
the  authorities  at  Washington  to  reinforce  Fort  Sumter,  peaceably  if  per- 
mitted, but  forcibly  if  they  must." 

He  further  says : 

"  The  war  was  then  and  there  inaugurated  and  begun  by  the  authori- 
ties at  Washington.  General  Beauregard  did  not  open  fire  upon  Fort 
Sumter  until  this  fleet  was,  to  his  knowledge,  very  near  the  Harbor  of 
Charleston,  and  until  he  had  enquired  of  Major  Anderson,  in  command  of 
the  Fort,  whether  he  would  engage  to  take  no  part  in  the  expected  blow, 
then  coming  down  upon  him  from  the  approaching  fleet  ?  " 

Governor  Pickens  and  General  Beauregard  had  been  notified  from 
Washington  of  the  approach  of  this  fleet,  and  the  objects  for  which  it  was 
sent,  but  this  notice  did  not  reach  them  (owing  to  the  treachery  and  dupli- 
city of  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Mr.  Seward,  practiced  on  the  Commissioners  sent 
to  Washington  by  the  Confederate  Government,  which  are  enough  to  bring 
the  blush  of  shame  to  the  cheek  of  every  American  citizen.)  until  the  fleet 
had  neared  its  destination.  But  Anderson  refused  to  make  any  promise, 
and  when  he  did  this,  it  became  necessary  for  Beauregard  to  reduce  the  fort 
as  he  did.  Otherwise  his  command  would  have  been  exposed  to  two  fires — 
one  in  front  and  the  other  in  the  rear. 

SEWARD'S  TREACHERY  AND   DUPLICITY. 

I  wish  I  had  the  time  to  give  here  the  details  of  this  miserable  treachery 
and  duplicity  practiced  on  the  Confederate  Commissions  by  Mr.  Seward, 
with,  as  he  says,  the  knowledge  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  These  gentlemen  had  been 
sent  to  Washington,  as  they  stated  in  their  letter  to  Mr.  Seward,  to  treat 
with  him,  "  with  a  view  to  a  speedy  adjustment  of  all  questions  growing 

[    9   ] 


out  of  this  political  separation,  upon  such  teims  of  amity  and  good  will  as 
the  respective  interests,  geographical  contiguity  and  luture  welfare  of  the 
two  nations  may  render  necessary." 

I  can  only  state  that  although  Mr.  Seward  refused  to  treat  with  the 
Commissioners  directly,  he  did  so,  through  the  medium  of  Justices  Campbell 
and  Nelson,  ot  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States;  that  through  these 
intermediaries  the  Commissioners  were  given  to  understand  that  Fort 
Sumter  would  be  evacuated  within  a  few  days,  and  they  were  kept  under 
that  impression  up  to  the  7th  ot  April,  1S61, although  during  that  interval 
ot  twenty-three  days  the  "  Relief  Squadron"  was  being  put  in  readiness 
for  reinforcing  Sumter.  And  even  on  that  date  [the  day  alter  the  Squad- 
ron was  ordered  to  sail),  Mr.  Seward  wrote  Judge  Campbell,  "'Faith  as  to 
Sumter  fully  kept ;  wait  and  see,"  when  he  must  have  known  that  nothing 
was  further  from  the  truth,  and  as  events  then  transpiring  conclusively 
showed.  Judge  Campbell  -wrote  two  letters  to  Mr.  Seward,  setting  out  all 
the  details  of  the  deception  practiced  on  the  Commissioners  through  him 
and  Justice  Nelson,  and  asked  an  explanation  of  his  conduct.  But  no 
explanation  was  ever  given,  simply  because  there  was  none  that  could  be 
given.  And  Mr.  Seward's  own  memorandum,  made  by  him  at  the  time, 
shows  that  he  was  acting  all  through  this  mattter  with  the  knowledge  and 
approval  of  Mr.  Lincoln  History  affords  but  lew  parallels,  if  an}\  to  such 
base  conduct  on  the  part  of  those  occupying  the  high  and  responsible  posi- 
tions then  held  by  these  men.  The  only  excuse  that  can  be  given  for  this 
conduct,  is  that  they  regarded  it  as  a  legitimate  deception  to  practice  in  a 
war  which  thev  had  then  alreadv  inaugurated. 


LINCOLN   ADMINISTRATION   RESPONSIBLE. 

Mr.  George  Lunt.  of  Massachusetts,  in  speaking  of  the  occurences  at 
Fort  Sumter,  uses  this  cautiously  framed  language,  as  the  question  of 
which  side  commenced  the  war  is  one  about  which  the  North  is  very  sensi- 
tive.    As  we  know,  on  the  7th  of  April,  1861,  President  Davis  said: 

"  With  the  Lincoln  administration  rests  the  responsibility  of  precipitat 
ing  a  collision  and  the  fearful  evils  of  protracted  civil  war." 

And  so  Mr.  Lunt  says: 

"  Whether  the  appearance  of  this  fleet  (the  Relief  Squadron)  under  the 
circumstances  could  be  considered  a  pacific  or  hostile  demonstration  may 
be  left  to  inference.  Whether  its  total  inaction  during  the  fierce  bombard- 
ment of  the  fort  and  its  defence  continued  for  daj^s,  and  until  its  final  sur- 
render, justhr  bears  the  aspect  of  an  intention  to  avoid  the  charge  of 
aggression,  and  to  give  the  whole  affair  the  appearance  of  defence  merely, 
may  also  be  referred  to  the  judgment  of  the  reader." 

The  question  also  occurs,  he  says — 

"  Whether  this  sudden  naval  demonstration  was  not  a  palpable  viola- 
tion of  the  promised  'faith  as  to  Sumter  tully  kept,'  as  to  he  an  unmistak- 
able menace  of'  aggrsession,'  if  not  absolute  aggression  itself.'1 

And  he  further  says: 

"It  should  also  be  considered  that  when  the  fleet  came  to  anchor  off 
Charleston  bar,  it  was  well  known  that  many  other  and  larger  vessels  of 
war,  attended  by  transports  containing  troops  and  surf  boats,  and  all  the 
necessary  means  of  landing  forces,  had  already  sailed  from  Northern 
ports —  destination  unknown  ' — and  that  very  considerable  time  must  have 
been  requisite  to  get  this  expedition  ready  for  sea,  during  the  period  that 
assurances  had  been  so  repeatedly  given  of  the  evacuation  of  the  fort. 

"It  bore  the  aspect  certainly  of  a  manoeuvre,  which  military  persons, 
and  sometimes,  metaphorically,  politicians,  denominate  '  stealing  a  march.'  " 

[  10  ] 


He  sa3rs  further  on  : 

"It  was  intended  to  'draw  the  fire'  of  the  Confederates,  and  was  a 
silent  aggression,  with  the  object  of  producing  an  active  aggression  from 
the  other  side." 

This  very  cautious  statement,  from  this  Northern  writer,  clearly  makes 
the  Lincoin  Government  the  real  aggressor,  under  the  principle  before 
enunciated  by  Mr.  Hallam. 

Mr.  Williams,  the  Massachusetts  writer  before  quoted  from,  says; 

"  There  was  no  need  for  war  The  action  of  the  Southern  States  was 
legal  and  constitutional,  and  history  will  attest  that  it  was  reluctantly 
taken  in  the  last  extremity,  in  the  hope  of  therein'  saving  their  whole  con- 
stitutional rights  and  liberties  from  destruction  by  Northern  aggression, 
■which  had  just  culminated  in  triumph  at  the  Presidential  election  by  the 
union  of  the  North  against  the  South." 

And  he  says  further  on  : 

''The  South  was  invaded,  and  a  war  of  subjugation,  destined  to  be  the 
most  gigantic  which  the  world  has  ever  seen,  was  begun  by  the  Federal 
Government  against  the  seceding  States,  in  complete  and  amazing  disre- 
gard of  the  foundation  principle  of  its  own  existence,  as  affirmed  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  that  Governments  derive  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed,'  and  as  established  by  the  war  of 
the  Revolution  for  the  people  of  the  States  respectively.  The  South 
accepted  the  contest  thus  forced  upon  her,  with  the  eager  and  resolute 
courage  characteristic  of  her  proud-spirited  people." 

But  I  propose  to  show  further  that  this  war  did  not  really  begin  with 
the  sailing  of  that  Northern  fleet,  and  certainly  not  at  Fort  Sumter;  and 
that  the  first  blow  -was  actualhr  struck  by  John  Brown  and  his  followers, 
as  the  representatives  ol  the  abolitionists  of  the  North,  in  October,  1859, 
at  Harper's  Ferry,  Va. 

THE  JOHN   BROWN   RAID. 

A  Northern  writer  says  of  the  "John  Brown  Raid  ": 

"Of  course,  a  transaction  so  flagitious  -with  its  attendant  circum- 
stances affording  such  unmistakable  proof  of  the  spirit  by  which  no  small 
portion  of  the  Northern  population  was  actuated,  could  not  but  produce 
the  profoundest  impression  upon  the  people  of  the  South.  Here  was  an 
open  and  armed  aggression,  whether  clearly  understood  and  encouraged 
beforehand,  certainty  exulted  in  afterwards,  by  persons  of  a  very  different 
standing  from  that  of  the  chief  actor  in  this  bloody  incursion  in  a  peaceful 
State." 

John  Rrown  and  his  associates  did  attempt  insurrection,  and  did  com- 
mit murder,  in  that  attempt,  upon  the  peaceful,  harmless  citizens  of  Vir- 
ginia, and  heexpatiated  these,  among  the  highest  crimes  known  to  the  law, 
upon  a  felon's  gallows.  How  was  that  execution  received  at  the  North? 
And  in  what  way  did  the  representatives  of  the  Republican  party  endorse 
and  adopt  as  their  own  the  conduct  of  this  felon  in  his  outrages,  his  "first 
blow"  struck  againsc  the  South?  We  will  let  the  same  Northern  writer 
tell.     He  sa;\  s: 

"  In  the  tolling  ©f  bells  and  the  firing  of  minute-guns  upon  the  occasion 
of  Brown's  funeral;  the  meeting-houses  were  draped  in  mourning  as  for  a 
hero;  the  prayers  offered;  the  sermons  and  discourses  pronounced  in  his 
honor  as  for  a  saint." 

Two  ol  Brown's  accomplices  were  fugitives  from  justice,  one  in  the 
State  of  Ohio,  and  the  other  in  that  of  Iowa.  Requisitions  were  issued  for 
them  by  the  Governor  of  Virginia;  and  the  Governor  of  each  of  these 
Northern  States  refused  to  surrender  the  criminal,  thus  making  themselves, 

[  11  ] 


and  the  people  the}'  represented,  to  a  degree  at  least,  particeps  criminis. 
And  the  newspapers  have  recently  informed  us,  that  the  present  Chief 
Magistrate  of  this  nation,  and  the  head  of  the  same  party,  which  deified 
John  Brown,  and  approved  of  his  crimes,  has  visited  and  stood  "uncov- 
ered "  at  his  grave,  as  if  he  still  recognized  him  as  the  "forerunner"  of  him 
whom  they  term  the  "  Savior  of  the  Country";  so  we  regard,  and  rightly 
regard,  his  attempted  insurrection,  as  the  legitimate  forerunner  of  the  cruel, 
illegal  and  unjustifiable  war,  inaugurated  and  waged  by  Mr.  Lincoln 
against  the  South. 


AGGRESSIONS   OF   THE  NORTH. 

But  we  advance  still  a  step  further  in  the  argument,  to  show  from 
Northern  authorities  alone,  still  other  aggressions  of  the  North  against  the 
South,  in  bringing  on  this  war.  In  his  speech,  entitled  "Under  the  Flag," 
delivered  in  Boston,  April  21st,  1861,  Wendell  Phillips  used  this  language, 
which  we  are  persuaded  is  the  opinion  of  man}'  misinformed  people  to-day, 
both  at  the  North  and  at  the  South.     He  says: 

"  For  thirty  3rears  the  North  has  exhausted  conciliation  and  com- 
promise. They  have  tried  every  expedient;  they  have  relinquished  every 
right,  they  have  sacrificed  every  interest,  t.hey  have  smothered  keen  sensi- 
bility to  national  honor,  and  Northern  weight  and  supremacy  in  the  Union  ; 
have  forgotten  the}'  were  the  majority  in  numbers  and  in  wealth,  in  educa- 
tion and  in  strength;  have  left  the  helm  of  government  and  the  dictation 
of  policy  to  the  Southern  States,"  &c. 

We  propose  to  show,  from  the  highest  Northern  sources,  that  so  far 
from  the  above  statement  being  true.it  is  exactly  the  opposite  ot  the  truth. 

Genl.  John  A.  Logan,  afterwards  a  Majcr-General  in  the  Federal  Army, 
a  United  States  Senator  and  a  candidate  for  the  Vice-Presidency  on  the 
Republican  ticket,  in  a  speech  delivered  in  the  House  of  Representatives,  on 
the  5th  of  February,  1861,  uses  this  language: 

"  The  Abolitionists  of  the  North  have  constantly  -warred  upon  South- 
ern institutions,  by  incessant  abuse  from  the  pulpit,  from  the  press,  on  the 
stump,  and  in  the  halls  of  Congress,  denouncing  them  as  a  sin  against  God 
and  man  .  .  .  By  these  denunciations  and  lawless  acts  on  the  part  of 
Abolition  fanatics  such  results  have  been  produced  as  to  drive  the  people  of 
the  Southern  States  to  a  sleepless  vigilance  for  the  protection  of  their 
property-  and  the  preservation  of  their  rights." 

The  Albany  Argus  of  November  10th,  1860,  said: 

"  We  sympathize  with,  and  justify  the  South  as  far  as  this ;  their  rights 
have  been  invaded  to  the  extreme  limit  possible  within  the  forms  of  the 
Constitution;  and  beyond  this  limit;  their  feelings  have  been  insulted,  and 
their  interests  and  honor  assailed  by  almost  every  possible  form  of  denun- 
ciation and  invective ;  and  if  we  deemed  it  certain  that  the  real  animous  of 
the  Republican  party  could  be  carried  into  the  administration  of  the  Fed- 
eral Government,  and  become  the  permanent  policy  of  the  nation,  we 
should  think  that  all  the  instincts  of  self-preservation  and  of  manhood, 
rightly  impelled  them  to  resort  to  revolution  and  a  separation  from  the 
Union,  and  we  would  applaud  them,  and  wish  them  God-speed  in  the 
adoption  of  such  a  remedy."  * 

The  Rochester  Union,  two  or  three  days  later,  said: 

"  Restricting  our  remarks  to  actual  violations  of  the  Constitution,  the 
North  has  led  the  way,  and  for  a  long  period  have  been  the  sole  offenders 
or  aggressors."  .  .  .  "  Owing  to  their  peculiar  circumstances,  the  South- 
ern States  cannot  retaliate  upon  the  North  without  taking  ground  tor 
secession." 

[  12  ] 


STARTED   BY   MR.   SEWARD. 

The  New  York  Express  said,  on  April  15th,  1861,  (the  day  after  the 
surrender  of  Sumter) : 

"The  '  Irrepressible  conflict '  started  by  Mr.  Seward,  and  endorsed  by  the 
Republican  partyr,  has  at  length  attained  to  its  logical  foreseen  result. 
That  conflict  undertaken  'for  the  sake  of  humanity'  culminates  now  in 
inhumanity  itself. "  .  .  .  "The  people  of  the  United  States,  it  must  be 
borne  in  mind,  petitioned,  begged  and  implored  these  men  (  Lincoln,  Seward, 
et  id),  who  are  become  their  accidental  masters,  to  give  them  an  oppor- 
tunity to  be  heard  before  this  unnatural  strife  was  pushed  to  a  bloody  ex- 
treme, but  their  petitions  were  all  spurned  with  contempt,"  &c. 

Mr.  George  Lunt,  a  Boston  lawyer,  in  an  able  work,  published  in  1866, 
entitled  "  The  Origin  of  the  Late  War,"  from  -which  we  have  before  quoted, 
says  of  the  action  of  the  Northern  people: 

"  But  by  incessantly  working  on  the  popular  mind,  through  every 
channel  through  which  it  could  be  possibly  reached,  a  state  of  feeling  was 
produced  which  led  to  the  enactment  of  Personal  Liberty  bills  by  one  after 
another  of  the  Northern  Legislative  Assemblies.  At  length  fourteen  of  the 
sixteen  Free  States  had  provided  statutes  which  rendered  any  attempt  to 
execute  the  fugitive  slave  act  so  difficult  as  to  be  practically  impossible, 
and  placed  each  of  those  States  in  an  attitude  of  virtual  resistance  to  the 
laws  of  the  United  States.1' 

If  these  acts  were  not  nullification,  what  were  they  ? 

LINCOLN  QUOTED   AS   PROOF. 

We  propose  to  introduce  as  our  last  piece  of  evidence  that,  which  it 
seems  to  us.  should  satisfy  the  mind  of  the  most  critical  and  exacting,  and 
which  establishes,  beyond  all  future  cavil,  which  side  was  the  aggressor  in 
bringing  on  this  conflict.  We  propose  now  to  introduce  Mr.  Lincoln  him- 
self. In  the  latest  life  of  this  remarkable  man,  written  by  Ida  M.  Tar  bell, 
and  published  by  Doubleday  &  McClure  Co.  in  1900,  she  introduces  a 
statement  made  to  her  by  the  late  Joseph  Medill,  editor  of  the  Chicago  Tri- 
bune, of  what  took  place  between  Mr.  Lincoln  and  a  Committee  of  which 
he  (Medill)  was  a  member,  sent  from  Chicago  to  Washington,  to  intercede 
with  the  authorities  there  to  be  relieved  from  sending  more  troops  from 
Cook  county,  as  was  required  by  the  new  draft  just  then  ordered,  and 
which,  as  we  know,  produced  riots  in  several  parts  of  the  North  The 
author  makes  Medill  tell  how  his  Committee  first  applied  for  relief  to  Mr. 
Stanton,  and  was  refused,  how  they  then  went  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  went 
with  them  to  see  Stanton  again,  and  there  listened  to  the  reasons  assigned 
pro  and  con  for  a  change  of  the  draft.     He  then  says : 

"I  shall  never  forget  how  he  (Lincoln)  suddenly  lifted  his  head  and 
turned  on  us  a  black  and  frowning  face: 

"'Gentlemen,'  he  said,  in  a  voice  full  of  bitterness,  'After  Boston,  Chi- 
cago has  been  the  chief  instrument  in  bringing  this  war  on  the  country. 
The  Northwest  has  opposed  the  South,  ns  New  England  has  opposed  the 
South.  It  is  you  who  are  largely  responsible  for  making  blood  flow  as  it  has. 
You  called  for  war  until  we  had  it.  You  called  for  emancipation,  and  I 
have  given  it  to  you  Whatever  you  have  asked,  you  have  had.  Now  you 
come  here  begging  to  be  let  off.  You  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourselves. 
I  have  a  right  to  expect  better  things  of  you.  Go  home  and  raise  your 
6,000  extra  men.'  " 

And  Medill  adds  that  he  was  completely  silenced  by  the  truth  of  Lin- 
coln's accusation,  and  that  they  went  home  and  raised  the  6,000  addi- 
tional troops.  We  couid  multiply  testimony  of  this  kind  almost  indefi- 
nitely ;  but  surely  we  have  introduced  enough  not  only  to  prove  that  the 
statement  made  by  Mr.  Phillips  is  utterly  without  foundanion,  but  to  show 
further,  by  the  testimony  of  our  quondam  enemies  themselves,  that  they 

[  13  ] 


were  the  aggressors  from  every  T«~'int  of  view,  and  that  the  South  only 
resisted  when,  as  the  New  York  Express  said  of  it  at  the  time,  it  had,  "in 
sell-preservation,  been  driven  to  the  wall,  and  furced  to  proclaim  its 
independence.''' 

VIRGINIA'S    EFFORTS    FOR   PEACE. 

We  can  only  briefly  allude  to  the  noble  efforts  made  by  Virginia,  through 
the  "  Pence  Congress,"  to  avert  the  conflict,  and  how  these  efforts  were 
rejected  almost  with  contempt  by  the  North.  Mr.  Lunt,  speaking  of  this 
noble  action  on  the  part  of  the  "Mother  of  Presidents,"  as  he  calls  Vir- 
ginia, says: 

"It  was  like  a  firebrand  suddenly  presented  at  the  portals  of  the 
Republican  Magazine,  and  the  whole  energy  of  the  radicals  was  at  once 
enlisted  to  make  it  of  no  effect." 

Several  of  the  Northern  States  sent  no  Commissioners  to  this  Congress 
at  all;  others,  like  Massachusetts,  only  sent  them  at  the  last  moment,  and 
then  sent  only  such  as  were  known  to  be  opposed  to  any  compromise 
or  conciliation. 

The  following  letter  of  Senator  Chandler,  of  Michigan,  indicates  too 
clearly  the  feelings  of  the  Republican  party  at  that  time  to  require  com- 
ment. It  is  dated  February  11th,  1861,  a  week  after  the  Congress 
assembled,  and  addressed  to  the  Governor  of  his  State.     He  says: 

"Governor  Bingham  (the  other  Senator  from  Michigan)  and  myself 
telegraphed  to  you  on  Saturday,  at  the  request  of  Massachusetts  and  New 
York,  to  send  delegates  to  the  Peace  Compromise  Congress.  They  admit 
that  we  were  right  and  they  were  wrong,  that  no  Republican  State  should 
have  sent  delegates ;  but  they  are  here  and  can't  get  away.  Ohio,  Indiana 
and  khode  Island  are  caving  in,  and  there  is  some  danger  of  Illinois;  and 
now  they  beg  us,  for  God's  sake  to  come  to  their  rescue  and  save  the 
Republican  party  from  rupture.  I  hope  you  will  send  stiff-backed  men  or 
none.  The  whole  thing  was  gotten  up  against  my  judgment  and  advice, 
and  will  end  in  thin  smoke.  Still  I  hope  as  a  matter  of  courtesy  to  some 
of  our  erring  brethren,  that  you  will  send  the  delegates. 
"  Truly  your  friend. 

"Z.  Chandler." 
"His  Excellency,  Austin  Blair." 

"  P.  S. — Some  of  the  Manufacturing  States  think  that  a  fight  would  be 
awful.  Without  a  little  blood-letting  this  Union  will  not,  in  my  estimation, 
be  worth  a  curse." 

Mr.  Lunt  says: 

"  If  this  truly  eloquent  and  statesmanlike  epistle  does  not  express  the 
views  of  the  Republican  managers  at  the  time,  it  does  at  least  indicate 
with  sufficient  clearness  their  relations  towards  the  'Peace  Conference  ' 
and  the  determined  purpose  of  the  radicals  to  have  '  a  fight,'  and  it  further- 
more foreshadows  the  actual  direction  given  to  future  events." 

HELD   OUT   TO   THE  LAST. 

But  I  cannot  protract  this  discussion  further.  Suffice  it  to  say,  that 
Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee  and  Arkansas  did  not  secede,  until  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  actually  declared  war  ayainst  the  seven  Cotton  and  Gulf 
States,  then  forming  the  Southern  Confederacy,  and  ca'led  on  these  four 
States  to  furnish  their  quota  ot  the  seventj'-five  thousand  troops  called  for 
by  him  to  coerce  these  States.  This  act,  on  Mr.  Lincoln's  part,  was  with- 
out any  real  authority  of  law,  and  nothing  short  of  the  most  flagrant 
usurpation,  Congress  alone  having  the  power  to  declare  war  under  the 
Constitution.  He  refused  to  convene  Congress  to  consider  the  grave  issues 
then  confronting  the  country.     But  when   it  did  assemble,  on   the  4th  of 

C  14  ] 


July,  1861,  he  tried  to  have  his  illegal  usurpation  validated  ;  but  Congress, 
although  then  having  a  Republican  majority,  refused  to  consider  the  reso- 
lution introduced  for  that  purpose.  The  four  States  above  named,  led  by 
Virginia,  only  left  the  Union  then,  after  exhausting  every  honorable  effort 
to  remain  in  it,  and  only  when  they  had  to  determine  to  tight  with  or 
against  their  sisters  of  the  South.  This  was  the  dire  alternative  presented 
to  them,  and  how  could  they  hesitate  longer  what  to  do  ? 

In  the  busy,  bustling,  practical  times  in  which  we  live,  it  will  doubtless 
be  asked  by  many,  and,  with  some  show  of  plausibility,  why  we  gather  up, 
and  present  to  the  world,  all  this  array  of  testimony  concerning  a  cause, 
which  is  almost  universally  known  as  the  "lost  cause,"  and  a  conflict, 
which  ended  more  than  thirty-rive  years  ago  ?  Does  it  not,  they  ask.  only 
tend  to  rekindle  the  embers  of  sectional  strife,  and  can  thus  only  do  harm  ? 
You,  our  comrades,  know  that  such  is  not  our  purpose  or  desire.  Our 
reasons  have  been  very  briefly  stated.  It  is  the  truth  that  constrains.  The 
apologists  for  the  Norti  ,  using  all  the  vehicles  of  falsehood,  are  insistent  in 
spreading  the  poison ;  with  it  the  antidote  must  go.  If  others  attribute  to 
us  wrong  motives  in  this  matter,  we  are  sorry,  but  we  have  no  apologies 
to  make  to  any  such.  We  admit  that  the  Confederate  war  is  ended  ;  that 
slavery  and  secession  are  forever  dead,  and  we  have  no  desire  to  revive 
them.  We  recognize,  too,  that  this  whole  country  is  one  country  and  our 
country.  We  desire  that,  government  and  people  doing  that  which  is  right, 
it  may  become  in  truth  a  glorious  land,  and  may  remain  a  glorious  inheri- 
tance to  our  children  and  our  children's  children.  But  we  believe  the  true 
way  to  preserve  it  as  such  an  inheritance  is  to  perpetuate  in  it  the  principles 
for  which  the  Confederate  soldier  fought — the  principles  of  Constitutional 
liberty,  and  of  local  self  government — or,  as  Mr.  Davis  puts  it,  "the  rights 
of  their  sires  won  in  the  Revolution,  the  State  sovereignty,  freedom  and 
independence,  which  were  left  to  us,  as  an  inheritance  to  their  posterity  for- 
ever." This  definition,  a  distinguished  Massachusetts  writer  says,  is  "the 
whole  case,  and  not  only  a  statement,  but  a  complete  justification  of  the 
Confederate  cause,  to  all  who  are  acquainted  with  the  origin  and  character 
of  the  American  Union." 

Yes,  we  repeat,  this  is  our  country,  and  of  it,  we  would  say,  with  Vir- 
ginia's dead  Laureate  at  the  Yorktown  celebration  : 

"Give  us  back  the  ties  of  Yorktown, 

Perish  all  the  modern  hates. 

Let  us  stand  together,  brothers, 

In  defiance  of  the  Fates, 
For  the  safety  of  the  Union 
Is  the  safety  of  the  States  " 

At  Appomattox,  the  Confederate  flag  was  furled,  and  we  are  content  to 
let  it  stay  so  forever.  Theie  is  enough  of  glory  and  sacrifice  encircled  in  its 
folds,  not  only  to  enshrine  it  in  our  hearts  forever;  but  the  very  trump  of 
fame  must  be  silenced,  when  it  ceases  to  proclaim  the  splendid  achievments 
over  which  that  flag  floated. 

BATTLE-FIELD,   NOT  A    FORUM. 

But,  Appomattox  was  not  a  judicial  forum ;  it  was  only  a  battle-field, 
a  test  of  physical  force,  where  the  starving  remnant  of  the  Army  of  North- 
ern Virginia,  "  wearied  with  victory,"  surrendered  to  "  overwhelming  num- 
bers and  resources."  We  make  no  appeal  from  that  judgment,  on  the  issue 
of  force.  But  when  we  see  the  victors  in  that  contest,  meeting  year  by  year 
and  using  the  superior  means  at  their  command,  to  publish  to  the  world, 
that  they  were  right  and  that  we  were  wronsr,  in  that  contest,  saying 
that  we  were  "Rebels"  and  "traitors,"  in  defending  our  homes  and  fire- 
sides against  their  cruel  invasion,  that  we  had  no  legal  right  to  withdraw 
from  the  Union,  when  we  only  asked  to  be  let  alone,  and  that  we  brought 
on  that  war;  we  say,  when  these,  and  other  wicked  and  false  charges  are 
brought  against  us  from  year  to  year,  and  the  attempt  is  systematically 
made  to  teach  our  children,  that  these  things  are  true,  and  therefore,  that 

[  15  ] 


we  do  notdeserve  their  S3'mpathy  and  respect,  becauseof  our  alleged  wicked 
and  unjustifiable  course  in  that  war  and  in  bringing  it  on — then  it  becomes 
our  duty,  not  only  to  ourselves,  and  our  children,  but  to  the  thousands  of 
brave  men  and  women  who  gave  their  lives  a  "  free-wdl  offering,"  in  defence 
of  the  principles  for  which  we  fought,  to  vindicate  the  justice  of  our  cause, 
and  to  do  this,  we  have  to  appeal  only  to  the  bar  of  truth  and  of  justice. 

THE    TRUTH   WILL    LIVE. 

We  know  the  Muse  of  History  may  be,  and  often  is,  startled  from  her 
propriety  for  a  time;  but  she  will  soon  regain  her  equipoise.  Ourlateenemy 
has  unwittingly  furnished  the  great  reservoir  from  which  the  truth  can  be 
drawn,  not  onl}'  in  what  they  have  said  about  us  and  our  cause,  both 
before  and  since  the  war ;  but  in  the  more  than  one  hundred  volumes  of  the 
official  records  published  under  the  authority  of  Congress.  We  are  content 
to  await,  "  with  calm  confidence."  the  results  of  theappeal  to  thesesources. 

We  have,  as  already  stated,  in  this  report,  attempted  to  vindicate  our 
cause,  by  referring  to  testimony  furnished  almost  entirel}'  from  the  speeches 
and  writings  of  our  adversaries,  both  before  and  since  the  war.  We  believe 
we  have  succeeded  in  doing  this.  Nay,  the  judgment,  both  of  the  justice  of 
our  cause,  and  the  conduct  of  the  war,  on  our  part,  has  been  written  for  us, 
and  that  too  by  the  hand  of  a  Massachusetts  man.      He  sa}*s  of  us: 

"  Such  exalted  character  and  achievement  are  not  all  in  vain.  Though 
the  Confederacy  fell  as  an  actual  phj-sical  power,  she  lives  illustrated  by 
them,  eternally  in  her  just  cause — the  cause  ot  Constitutional  liberty." 

Then,  in  the  language  of  Virginia's  Laureate  again,  we  say: 

"  Then  stand  up,  oh  my  countrymen, 

And  unto  God  give  thanks 
On  mountains  and  on  hillsides 

And  by  sloping  river  banks, 
Thank  God,  that  you  were  worthy 

Of  the  grand  Contederate  ranks." 

Since  your  last  year's  Report  was  mainly  directed  to  the  vindication  of 
our  people  from  the  false  charge  that  we  went  to  war  to  perpetuate 
slavery,  we  have  thought  we  could  render  no  more  valuable  service  in  this 
Report,  than  to  show — (1)  That  we  were  right  on  the  real  question 
involved  in  the  contest;  and  (2)  That  notwithstanding  this,  and  the 
further  fact,  that  the  South  had  never  violated  the  Constitution,  whilst  the 
North  had  confessedly  repeatedly  done  so  ;  nay,  that  fourteen  of  the  sixteen 
Free  States  had  not  only  nullified,  but  had  defied  acts  of  Congress  passed  in 
pursuance  of  the  Constitution,  and  the  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  sus- 
taining those  acts,  and  that  the  North,  and  not  the  South,  had  brought  on 
the  war.  We  believe  we  have  established  these  propositions  by  evidence 
furnished  by  our  late  adversaries ;  and  the  last,  by  that  of  Mr.  Lincoln  him- 
self. On  this  testimony,  we  think  we  can  afford  to  rest  our  case.  And  we 
believe  that  the  evidence  furnished  in  our  last  Report,  and  in  this,  will 
establish  the  justice,  both  of  our  cause  and  of  the  conduct  of  our  people  in 
reference  to  the  war. 


HISTORIES  IN    OUR   SCHOOLS. 

The  several  histories,  used  in  schools,  were  so  fully  discussed  in  our  last 
Report,  that  we  deem  it  unnecessary  to  add  an3*thing  further  on  that  sub- 
ject. We  are  gratified  to  be  able  to  report,  that  the  two  works,  adversely 
criticised  in  our  last  Report,  viz.:  Fiske's  and  Cooper,  Estill  &  Lemon's 
Histories,  respectively,  have  found  but  little  favor  with  the  School  Boards 
of  our  State.  This  is  shown  by  the  fact,  that  out  of  the  118  counties  and 
corporations  in  the  State  but  one  has  adopted  Fiske's,  and  that  one  has 
purchased  a  supply  of  Jones'  History,  to  be  used  by  the  pupils  in  studying 
the  history  pertaining  to  the  war.    That  Cooper,  Estill  &  Lemon's  History 

[  16  ] 


is  now  only  used  in  six  places;  whilst  all  the  other  counties  and  corpora- 
tions (with  the  exception  of  one,  which  uses  Hansell's.)  use  either  Mrs. 
Lee's  or  Dr.  Jones'  Histories,  or  the  two  conjointly,  the  relative  use  of  these 
being  as  follows:  Lee's,  68;  Jones'.  25;  Lee  and  Jones,  conjointly,  17. 

It  will  thus  be  seen,  that  the  danger  apprehended  from  the  use  of  the 
two  works  criticised,  is  reduced  to  the  minimum.  But  we  must  not  be  sat- 
isfied until  that  danger  is  entirely  removed  by  the  abolishment  of  these 
books  from  the  list  of  those  adopted  for  use,  by  our  State  Board  of  Educa- 
tion. We  are  informed  by  this  Board,  that  it  can  do  nothing  in  this  direc- 
tion pending  the  terms  of  the  existing  contracts  with  the  publishers  of 
these  works,  which  contracts  expire  on  July  31st,  1902.  But  we  are  also 
informed,  that  under  the  provisions  of  a  law  passed  prior  to  the  making  of 
these  contracts,  it  is  competent  for  County  and  City  School  Boards,  to 
change  the  text-books  on  the  history  of  the  United  States  whenever  they 
deem  it  proper  to  do  so.  We  would,  therefore,  urge  these  local  boards  to 
stop  the  use  of  the  two  works  criticised  in  our  last  report,  at  once. 

COMPOSED  OF  GOOD  MEN. 

It  is  also  most  gratifying  to  us  to  state,  what  you,  perhaps,  already 
know,  that  all  three  of  the  members  of  our  State  Board  of  Education,  are 
not  only  native  and  true  Virginians,  but  men  devoted  to  the  principles  for 
which  we  fought,  and  that  they,  and  each  ot  them,  stand  ready  to  co- 
operate with  us,  as  far  as  they  can  legally  and  properly  do  so,  in  having  our 
children  taught  "the  truth,  the  whole  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth,"  in 
regard  to  the  war,  and  the  causes  which  led  to  it.  We  would  ask  for 
nothing  more,  and  we  should  ask  lor  nothing  less,  from  any  source. 

We  repeat  the  recommendation  heretolore  made,  both  to  this  Camp 
and  to  the  United  Confederate  Veterans,  that  separate  chairs  of  American 
history  be  established  in  all  of  our  principal  Southern  Colleges,  so  that  the 
youth  of  our  land  may  be  taught  the  truth  as  to  the  formation  of  this 
government,  and  of  the  principles  for  which  their  fathers  fought  for  the 
establishment  and  maintenance  of  Constitutional  liberty  in  our  land. 

Our  attention  has  recently  been  called  to  the  fact  that  in  none  of  the 
histories  used  in  our  schools,  is  any  mention  made  (certainty  none  com- 
pared with  what  it  deserves  I  of  the  splendid  services  rendered  our  cause  by 
the  devoted  and  gallant  band  led  by  Col.  John  S.  Mosby.  This  organiza- 
tion, whilst  forming  a  part  of  Genl.  Lee's  Army,  and  at  all  times  subject  to 
his  orders,  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes  an  independent  command.  We 
believe,  that  for  its  numbers  and  resources,  it  performed  as  gallant,  faithful 
and  efficient  services  as  any  other  command  in  any  part  of  our  armies,  and 
that  no  history  of  our  cause  is  at  all  complete,  that  fails  to  give  some 
general  idea,  at  the  least,  of  the  deeds  of  devotion  and  daring  performed  by 
this  gallant  band  and  its  intrepid  leader. 

UNION   OF   OUR  FATHERS. 

We  sometimes  hear  (not  often,  it  is  true,  but  still  too  often)  from  those 
who  were  once  Confederate  soldiers  themselves,  or  from  the  children  of 
Confederates,  such  expressions  as — "  We  are  glad  the  South  did  not  succeed 
in  her  struggle  for  independence."  "We  are  glad  that  slavery  is  abol- 
ished," &c. 

We  wish  to  express  our  sincere  sorrow  and  regret,  that  any  of  our  peo- 
ple should  so  far  forget  themselves  as  to  indulge  in  any  such  remarks.  In 
the  first  place,  we  think  they  are  utterly  uncalled  for,  and  in  bad  taste.  In 
the  second  place,  to  some  extent,  they  reflect  upon  the  Confederate  cause, 
and  those  who  defended  that  cause;  and  in  the  third  place,  it  seems  to  us, 
if  our  own  sell-respect  does  not  forever  seal  our  lips  against  such  expres- 
sions, that  the  memories  of  a  sacred  past,  the  blood  of  the  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  those  who  died,  the  tears,  the  toils,  the  wounds,  and 
the  innumerable  sacrifices  of  both  the  living  and  the  dead,  that  were  freely 
given  for  the  success  of  that  cause,  would  be  an  appeal  against  such  expres- 

[  17  ] 


sions,  that  could  not  be  resisted.  If  all  that  is  meant  by  the  first  of  these 
expressions  is,  that  the  speaker  means  to  sa\r,  "  He  is  glad  that  the  '  Union 
of  our  Fathers'  is  preserved,"  then  we  can  unite  with  him  in  rejoicing  at 
this,  if  this  is  the  "  Union  of  our  Fathers,"  as  to  which  we  have  the  gravest 
doubts.  But  be  this  as  it  may  ;  we  havencver  believed  that  the  subjugation 
of  the  South  or  the  success  of  the  North,  was  either  necessary,  or  the  best 
way  to  preserve  and  perpetuate  the  "  Union  of  our  Fathers." 

On  the  secession  of  Mississippi,  her  Convention  sent  a  Commissioner 
from  that  State  to  Maryland,  who,  at  that  time,  it  may  be  sure,  expressed 
the  real  objects  sought  to  be  obtained  by  secession  by  the  great  body  of  the 
Southern  people.     He  said  : 

"Secession  is  not  intended  to  break  up  the  present  Government,  but  to 
perpetuate  it.  We  do  not  propose  to  go  out  by  way  of  destroying  the 
Union,  as  our  fathers  gave  it  to  us,  but  we  go  out  for  the  purpose  of  getting 
further  guarantees  and  security  for  our  rights,"  &c. 

MIGHT  HAVE   BEEN   BETTER. 

And  so  we  believe,  that  with  the  success  of  the  South,  the  "Union  of 
our  Fathers",  which  the  South  was  the  principal  factor  in  forming,  and  to 
which  she  was  f^r  more  attached  than  the  North,  would  have  been  restored 
and  re-established;  that  in  this  Union  the  South  would  have  been  again  the 
dominant  people,  the  controlling  power,  and  that  its  administration  of  the 
Government  in  that  Union,  would  have  been  along  constitutional  and  just 
lines,  and  not  through  Military  Districts,  attempted  Confiscations,  Force 
Bills,  and  other  oppressive  and  illegal  methods,  such  as  characterized  the 
conduct  of  the  North  for  four  years  after  the  war,  in  its  alleged  restoration 
of  a  Union  which  it  denied  had  ever  been  dissolved. 

As  to  the  abolition  of  slavery:  Whilst  we  know  of  no  one  in  the  South 
who  does  not  rejoice,  that  this  has  been  accomplished,  we  know  of  no  one, 
anywhere,  so  lost  to  every  sense  of  right  and  justice,  as  not  to  condemn 
the  iniquitous  way  in  which  this  was  done.  But  we  feel  confident  that  no 
matter  how  the  war  had  ended,  it  would  have  resulted  in  the  freedom  of 
the  slave,  and  as  surely  with  the  success  of  the  South  as  with  that  of  the 
North,  although  perhaps  not  so  promptly. 

We  are  warranted  in  this  conclusion,  from  several  considerations — (1) 
It  was  conclusively  shown  in  our  last  Report,  that  we  did  not  fight  for  the 
continuation  of  slavery,  and  that  a  large  majority  of  our  soldiers  were 
non-slaveholders;  (2)  That  our  great  leader,  General  Lee,  had  freed  his 
slaves  before  the  war,  whilst  General  Grant  held  on  to  his  until  they  were 
freed  by  the  Emancipation  Proclamation;  and  (3)  Whilst  Mr.  Lincoln 
issued  that  proclamation,  he  said  in  his  first  inaugural: 

"I  have  no  purpose,  directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery  in  the  States  where  it  exists.  I  believe  I  have  no  lawful 
right  to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclination  to  do  so." 

EMANCIPATION   OF   SLAVES. 

With  the  success  of  the  South,  we  believe  emancipation  would  have  fol- 
lowed by  some  method  of  compensation  for  the  property  rights  in  slaves, 
just  as  the  North  had  received  compensation  for  the  same  property,  when 
held  by  it.  Certainly  it  would  not  have  been  accomplished  by  putting-  the 
whites  under  the  heel  of  the  blacks,  as  was  attempted  by  the  North.  In 
the  contest  between  Lincoln  and  McClellan,  in  1864,  the  people  of  the 
North  were  nearly  equally  divided  on  the  issues  involved  in  the  war,  Lin- 
coln having  received  2,200,000  votes  in  that  contest,  whilst  McClellan 
received  1,800,000  (in  round  numbers).  We  know  too,  that  Lincoln  was 
not  only  a  "minority"  President,  but  a  big  "minority"  President,  his 
opponents  having  received  a  million  more  votes  in  1860  than  he  received. 
So  that,  with  a  divided  North,  and  a  united  South,  on  the  princeples  for 
which  we  contended,  if  the  South  had  been  successful  in  the  war,  her  people 

[  18  ] 


would  have  dominated  and  controlled  this  country  for  the  last  thirty-five 
years,  as  they  did  the  first  seventy  years  of  its  existence,  and,  in  our 
opinion,  both  the  country  and  the  South  would  have  been  benefited  by 
that  domination  and  control. 

Again,  think  of  the  difference  between  the  South  being  made  to  pay  the 
war  debt,  and  pensions  of  the  North,  and  the  latter  having  to  pay  those  of 
the  former.  And  again,  we  reason,  that  if  the  South,  in  all  the  serfdom 
and  oppression  in  which  she  was  left  by  the  results  of  the  war,  has  accom- 
plished what  she  has — (she  has  made  greater  material  advances  in  propor- 
tion than  any  other  section) — what  could  she  not  have  done,  if  she  had 
been  the  conqueror  instead  of  the  conquered  ? 

We  simply  allude  to  these  material  facts,  with  the  hope  that  these, 
and  every  consideration  dictated  by  self-respect,  love  of,  and  lo}ralty  to,  a 
sacred  and  glorious  past,  will  prevent  a  repetition  of  the  expressions  of 
which  we,  as  representatives  of  the  Confederate  cause  and  people,  justly 
complain,  and  against  which  we  earnestly  protest. 

All  of  which  is  respectfuily  submitted. 

GEORGE  L.   CHRISTIAN, 
Acting  Chairman  History  Committee. 


[  19  ] 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00032721449 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
THE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


. 


